Don't depend on distutils

[wentasah]

Checklist:

• Your branch is up-to-date with the master branch and tested with latest changes
• Extended the README / documentation, if necessary
• Code compiles correctly and runs
• Code is formatted and checked with Utilities/code_check_and_formatting.sh
• Changelog is updated

Description

distutils are no longer available in Python 3.12. Therefore, we copy the strtobool function from distutils to our own module. This is in line with https://peps.python.org/pep-0632/#migration-advice.

Where has this been tested?

• Platform(s): Linux
• Python version(s): 3.12
• Unreal Engine version(s): 4.26
• CARLA version: 0.9.15

Possible Drawbacks

Hopefully none.

---

This change is 

[Daraan]

Suggested change

	* Allow using with Python 3.12
	* Implement `strtobool` formerly included in `distutils`, which is removed in Python 3.12.

I am certain you checked it with 3.12, however I think its not yet 100% 3.12 ready, e.g. the requirements.txt file, and the core team should make this stement.
Therefore, I think we should adjust this statement to be more precise on this PR.

[wentasah]

Yes, this is better. I'm using this with 3.12, but without the requirements.txt file, so its content might need some update.

[Daraan]

There is a tools and utilities folder. I suggest to move this to a tools/strtobool.py or another fitting file.

[wentasah]

Makes sense. Moved.

[Daraan]

Reviewed 4 of 5 files at r2, all commit messages.
Reviewable status: 4 of 5 files reviewed, 2 unresolved discussions

[ClemensLinnhoff]

I tried this branch, but I still get an error during installing of the requirements:

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'distutils.msvccompiler'

I am under Ubuntu 22.04 and I tried it in a venv with Python 3.

[wentasah]

Can you send the full backtrace? I don't see any occurrence of msvccompiler in the scenario runner code base, so this is probably from some dependency. I was testing this on NixOS and used different versions of dependencies than those from requirements.txt.

[ClemensLinnhoff]

Here is the full output:

Collecting py-trees==0.8.3
  Using cached py_trees-0.8.3-py3-none-any.whl (61 kB)
Collecting numpy==1.18.4
  Using cached numpy-1.18.4.zip (5.4 MB)
  Installing build dependencies ... done
  Getting requirements to build wheel ... done
  Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) ... error
  error: subprocess-exited-with-error
  
  × Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) did not run successfully.
  │ exit code: 1
  ╰─> [24 lines of output]
      Running from numpy source directory.
      <string>:461: UserWarning: Unrecognized setuptools command, proceeding with generating Cython sources and expanding templates
      Traceback (most recent call last):
        File "/opt/carla-simulator/scenario_runner/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pep517/in_process/_in_process.py", line 363, in <module>
          main()
        File "/opt/carla-simulator/scenario_runner/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pep517/in_process/_in_process.py", line 345, in main
          json_out['return_val'] = hook(**hook_input['kwargs'])
        File "/opt/carla-simulator/scenario_runner/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pep517/in_process/_in_process.py", line 164, in prepare_metadata_for_build_wheel
          return hook(metadata_directory, config_settings)
        File "/tmp/pip-build-env-yvnxgwvm/overlay/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 377, in prepare_metadata_for_build_wheel
          self.run_setup()
        File "/tmp/pip-build-env-yvnxgwvm/overlay/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 522, in run_setup
          super().run_setup(setup_script=setup_script)
        File "/tmp/pip-build-env-yvnxgwvm/overlay/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 320, in run_setup
          exec(code, locals())
        File "<string>", line 488, in <module>
        File "<string>", line 465, in setup_package
        File "/tmp/pip-install-rtdln26_/numpy_7122fe4224844daeb3356d0eb1228b32/numpy/distutils/core.py", line 26, in <module>
          from numpy.distutils.command import config, config_compiler, \
        File "/tmp/pip-install-rtdln26_/numpy_7122fe4224844daeb3356d0eb1228b32/numpy/distutils/command/config.py", line 20, in <module>
          from numpy.distutils.mingw32ccompiler import generate_manifest
        File "/tmp/pip-install-rtdln26_/numpy_7122fe4224844daeb3356d0eb1228b32/numpy/distutils/mingw32ccompiler.py", line 34, in <module>
          from distutils.msvccompiler import get_build_version as get_build_msvc_version
      ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'distutils.msvccompiler'
      [end of output]
  
  note: This error originates from a subprocess, and is likely not a problem with pip.
error: metadata-generation-failed

× Encountered error while generating package metadata.
╰─> See above for output.

note: This is an issue with the package mentioned above, not pip.
hint: See above for details.